


The Color Red

by cleo_withoutthepatra



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Harry is alive, Mental Breakdown, Sorry Not Sorry, and merlin, and poor broken eggsy, basically a whole lot of eggsy whump, doesn't have to be romance (could be friendship), eggsy doesn't take it well, he really just needs a hug, panic attack (sort of), worried roxy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 12:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3570419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleo_withoutthepatra/pseuds/cleo_withoutthepatra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's the thing about mental breakdowns - you never see them coming.</p>
<p>(or the one where it's been two weeks, eggsy can't cope without harry anymore, and it all comes crashing down thanks to a plate of spaghetti)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Color Red

**Author's Note:**

> so this is my first story and these tag things are majorly confusing.
> 
> but more importantly, this story doesn't have to be looked at romantically (when i wrote it it wasn't intended to be that way) but because so many people ship hartwin i could see it seeming romantic and that's why i tagged it the way i did
> 
> its basically just me releasing my love for eggsy in the form of torture to his poor little feelings. because im a cruel person and making my babies suffer is how i show my love.
> 
> ok, on with the story!

In Eggsy’s defense, not telling anyone anything was what he had been taught to do. He had learned quickly that no one really gave a fuck about his problems – actually, that was the way he had grown to like it. Because the last thing he wanted to do was tangle other people up in the shit going on in his head. His problems were his problems, and having other people worry about them would only lead to pain. And he would rather drown alone than take anyone down with him.

Of course, Harry had been the exception. Harry had encouraged him to talk and share and vent and cry and pour out everything into him. He had asked Eggsy about what he was going on, had genuinely wanted to know and feel whatever Eggsy was dealing with. It didn’t make sense to the boy, because people weren’t supposed to care about him, let alone the ugly, dark, storming part of him.

But it was hard for Eggsy to feel bad about bringing the man into his shit when it felt so goddamn good. To talk and be listened to. To be looked at as something other than a full-of-shit problem child who would never amount to anything.

The thing was, Harry was dead. And that fact was creating a shitstorm that Eggsy couldn’t talk to anyone about. A shitstorm that Eggsy could feel was about to explode.

However, it wasn’t supposed to be at a party.

“Eggsy, could you pass the rolls?”

Eggsy looked up from staring at his plate to the voice. Merlin. The man was sitting to his left, and had one hand reached out slightly and a small smile on his face. Eggsy glanced over at the bowl of bread rolls to his right, just as the women on his other side leaned in and grabbed one. She caught Eggsy watching, casting him a sly little grin as she grabbed a knife and started buttering the bread in smooth, circular strokes.

Merlin had grinned and winked at him when he had said Eggsy, the big hero of the celebration, would be sitting next to one of their more esteemed and attractive guests, some princess of some country he’d never heard of. Not the princess he’d butt-fucked, of course, but he honestly wouldn’t have cared either way. He didn’t want to be sitting next to the beautiful woman. He didn’t even want to be here, with all these too happy, too loud people who were so keen on celebrating the not-end-of-the-world that they forgot to think about all the people that died to make it that way. Like, for example, one Harry fucking Hart.

He would’ve preferred to be there, to still be an oblivious maybe-recruit, trying his hardest to impress the only man who seemed to give a fuck about him.

_I see a young man with potential._

Eggsy had to take a deep breath, pushing the bile that suddenly rose to his throat back down, because this was not the place to start thinking about all that he lost. He was supposed to be happy. Happiest, even, next to Merlin and Roxy that is. He fucking saved the world. So why did he feel like it was slowly collapsing around him?

“Eggsy?” Eggsy blinked, swiveling his head to look at Merlin again. The older man’s face was slightly crinkled as he gave Eggsy a long look.

“You alright?”

Eggsy looked from Merlin to Roxy, who was sitting opposite the man on the long table. She was watching him too, eyebrows drawn in and lips angled slightly down. Worry. They were worried. Which was the last thing Eggsy wanted – having his shit hurt other people. So he pressed a sick feeling smile to his face.

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

Judging by their faces, his smile probably looked more like a grimace, and his words sounded even worse than they tasted. He watched Roxy and Merlin make eye contact, some sort of invisible conversation going on between them that made Eggsy squirm slightly in his seat. They were invisible-talking about him. They knew something was wrong. He felt the smile plastered to his face sink, quickly correcting himself and making it as genuine as possible.

“Seriously, quit freaking out ‘bout me. I’m tryna to enjoy my I-just-fucking-saved-the-world dinner here,” he said, trying to sound as light-hearted as he could. He wasn’t sure if they bought it, but either way, he moved on.

“You said you wanted the rolls, right guv?” he asked Merlin. The man nodded, smiling again, and Eggsy could only wonder if it was as fake as his own. He grabbed the bowl from beside him, purposefully shooting an obvious wink at the woman just to clear the tension a bit more, and handed the rolls to Merlin.

“Thank you, Eggsy.” Eggsy saluted the man, slightly disgusted by how easily he could put on a front of happiness. “My pleasure.”

Part of him felt wrong for even pretending he was ok. It seemed like a sin against Harry, that the man was dead and he was out here celebrating some sort of twisted victory that wouldn’t have happened without the man himself. Harry should be sitting here, not him. He didn’t fucking deserve it. He was still the disappointment he had always been. The disappointment Harry had believed he was.

“So, big agent on campus. How do you feel, Eggsy?”

Eggsy glanced up (he really needed to stop getting fucking distracted by himself) at Percival, who was sitting beside Roxy. He shrugged.

“Good, I guess,” he replied, smiling politely at the man. He didn’t really know Percival, besides that he was Roxy’s own mentor and was immensely proud of her. Anyone who liked Roxy was ok in his book though, so he decided to actually try and have a pleasant conversation with the man. He was acutely aware of Roxy watching him, as if waiting for the smallest sign that he wasn’t ok to whisk him off to the infirmary or something.

“You guess?” Percival said with a snort. “You must be feeling on top of the world, agent. Without you, we wouldn’t be here right now.”

Eggsy grinned and ducked his head as if the praise embarrassed him. In truth, it was to disguise the sudden wave of nausea at even the thought of feeling anywhere close to ‘on top of the world’ with Harry dead because of him. Harry. Dead. Because of him.

“Well, sort of. It did feel good to put a stake through Valentine though,” Eggsy said with his usual smirk, the words heavy on his tongue. It had only felt good because the man had killed Harry. And afterwards, he could only wonder if Harry would be upset that he had resorted to violence to justify him. That he had killed a man in his name. All he wanted was to make the man proud, and here he was, fucking it all up and disappointing someone who wasn’t even alive anymore.

Percival laughed lightly, tipping his glass of red wine towards Eggsy. “Here’s to that. And don’t worry kid – Harry would be proud.”

Eggsy felt something sharp spark in him at that one. He was tired of hearing that – that Harry would be proud. Was tired of hearing his name used with “would be” instead of “is.” Was tired of hearing that the man would be proud when the last thing Eggsy remembered about him was the cold look of disappointment on his face. Was tired making small chat with people who didn’t care about him other than the fact that he ‘saved the world.’ Was tired of this fucking party. Was tired of everything.

“No he wouldn’t.” Percival paused abruptly in his sip of wine, and Eggsy briefly noted both Roxy and Merlin’s heads swiveling over faster than he could say fuck. Only he didn’t say fuck, or apologize, or anything, because for some reason he was sick of people assuming he could ever make such a brilliant man anything even close to proud.

“Pardon me?” Percival said slowly, after looking at both Roxy and Merlin in a did he really just say that sort of way.

“I’m sorry,” Eggsy laughed bitterly. “But if you honestly think I could ever come close to making someone like Harry proud, you’re delusional.”

Percival put his drink down just as Roxy breathed out a small, “Eggsy.”

He glanced at her briefly, taking in her crinkled eyes and furrowed eyebrows and painfully distressed eyes. He looked back at Percival, who looked a strange mixture of lightly concerned, shocked, irritated, and confused.

“Agent, we could all see how much Harry cared about you. You were practically his son – he couldn’t have been any prouder if he tried,” Percival said smoothly.

Eggsy snorted, which might have been rude to an upper agent, judging by the way Percival’s eyebrows shot up, but he honestly didn’t care. “Look, guv, I let Harry fucking Hart down in every fucking way possible. I was a joke as an agent – I couldn’t even shoot a fucking dog. Not to mention when I was released from Kingsman, I fucking stole his boss’s car, tried to beat the shit out of my step-dad, and only didn’t because he stopped me. And then he had to face the fact that his hand-selected recruit, me, was a fucking waste. And being disappointed in me was one of the last things he felt before he died. So if that qualifies making him proud, than fuck it, he should be proud as hell. But last time I checked, it doesn’t. So stop assuming I deserve this ‘he would’ve been proud’ shit. Because I don’t. Associating me with him is an insult to the man Harry Hart i – was. And after all he’s done to make sure our selfish asses ended up alive at this party tonight, insult is the last thing he deserves.”

Eggsy was slightly out of breath when he finished. Percival’s jaw was completely slack. Merlin’s too, although he looked less shocked and more worried out of his mind. Roxy’s hand was over her mouth and her eyes were brimming with moisture. Eggsy kept breathing heavily, looking from one person to the other. He felt the woman beside him watching him too, and a couple others at the table that no doubt heard him. A sudden wave of dizziness overcame him and the room became too hot and his breaths weren’t breaths as much as they were sharp, shuddering stabs of air that did nothing to alleviate the horrible pressure building inside of him.

“Dinner is served!”

Everyone’s eyes shot up to the Italian waiter as he began placing down dishes in front of everyone. The noise doubled as people began ooh-ing and aah-ing over their meals. Everything around him was too much, too loud and to chaotic and too fast. The smells of chicken and Caesar salad and lasagna assaulted him, looming heavily in the air around him until they seemed to choke any chance he had at breathing. Percival was still staring at him. Roxy looked close to actually crying. Merlin looked ready to drag him to the infirmary. And the waiter, unbeknownst to what he was about to cause, placed down a steaming plate of spaghetti in front of Eggsy.

Eggsy normally liked spaghetti – his mom had always been crazy good at making it. This was supposed to be a good meal, a meal that calmed him down and reminded him of home and took an edge off of the intensifying panic he felt growing in him in the two weeks after the Valentine stunt that it took for this party to happen. What happened couldn’t be farther from that.

One look at the spaghetti and Eggsy felt his entire stomach flip. Suddenly, the strikingly red tomato sauce was anything but that. It was blood, blood everywhere, blood coating his hands and lodged under his nails and filling every groove of his body. Harry’s blood as that bullet tore through his head, as Eggsy had to fucking watch him die over a tiny laptop screen, watch Valentine’s gun explode in slow motion and scream as it barreled towards Harry too fast and too slow and why wasn’t he moving? He needed to get out of the way he needed to move he needed to do something. And for a moment it seemed he did, because the view of the world Eggsy could see through Harry’s glasses shifted, toppling, crumpling. Eggsy had a split second thought of ok it’s ok he’s ducking before the ducking became falling became the glasses clattering off and capturing Harry Hart’s small, terrified look of shock and the bullet hole in his head before they broke on the cement.

And Eggsy was screaming. Eggsy was fucking throwing the laptop and everything on the desk. He was breaking Harry’s furniture and throwing the bottle of whisky across the room and waiting for the destruction outside to match the destruction in his mind because Harry Hart had just died and Harry Hart wasn’t supposed to fucking die and this wasn’t supposed to fucking happen and everything was fucking wrong and _fuck him it was all his fault it was all Eggsy’s fault he was nothing but a fuckup and Harry would never be proud and_ -

“Eggsy!” The word was accompanied with a sudden hand on his shoulder, and he was about to throw it off, to flip it over him and into the chaos he had created. Only everything around him changed suddenly. He wasn’t in Harry’s house, hadn’t just watched Harry die. He was at a dinner party. And it wasn’t the desk he’d flipped, but the table. It wasn’t Harry’s house he’d destroyed, but the dining room. Wine glasses were smashed against the wall. people’s dishes were shattered on the other side of the room. Guests were still stumbling away from him, fear and confusion and shock dancing in their eyes as they looked at him. All looked at him. The eyes were like needles, judging and prodding and picking away and fuck he still couldn’t breathe. So he looked down. At the remains of spaghetti on his floor and hands. The red stained everything, and the room swam dangerously before his eyes. '

Everything was painfully silent as he looked up again, eyes meeting Percival’s directly across from him.

“You’re right. Harry Hart would be fucking proud,” he said, voice sounding weirdly strangled even to him. Then he turned and ran. The hand on his shoulder, which he judged to be either Roxy’s or Merlin’s, disappeared, and someone called his name, but it was too late. The world was squeezing in on him and he still couldn’t breathe to save his fucking life and if he didn’t escape somehow he’d end up dead like Harry and maybe that’s what he deserved after all this. Maybe he deserved that bullet in the head if it meant Harry living. Maybe he wanted it.

He barely even realized he wasn’t in the dining room anymore until he was throwing open the door to the bathroom stall, barely managing to close it behind him. He leaned over the toilet and quite promptly threw up whatever was in his stomach. Which wasn’t much – eating had become something of a chore the past weeks, and the way he saw it, how could he stand to eat if Harry couldn’t too?

He sank to the floor, head exploding and heart hammering and lungs shuddering with each painful breath and if Harry couldn’t breathe maybe he fucking shouldn’t be either.

Eggsy hadn’t cried since the day Harry died. After saving the world, he had tried his hardest to bottle everything up, to put on his best façade and forget about the shit in his mind until it disappeared. Only it didn’t. It festered and grew until eventually, it exploded. And pressed against the cold tile floor, hard wall sharp against his spine, Eggsy pulled his knees up to his chin, curled into the smallest ball possible, and began to cry.

The tears were hot and sticky and if he thought hard enough, he could imagine they too were blood. Everything was blood. With all the death he had caused, Harry’s included, blood seemed all he was capable of feeling. The sobs were painfully loud, tearing at his throat and slamming his back repeatedly against the wall and making it even harder to get a breath in the suffocating emotion around him.

_Harry Harry Harry Harry Harry Harry H-_

“Get the fuck off of me!”

The roaring voice hardly penetrated the world Eggsy was currently drowning in. But he heard it. Faintly, distantly, not understanding what it meant or who it came from but knowing it was a sound other than his harsh sobs and the blaring in his skull.

“You can’t see him, it’s-“

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do Merlin. The boy should never have been told a lie in the first place!”

“He had to be! No one was supposed to know a-“

“I know! Protocol and tradition and safety but fuck it Merlin, this is Eggsy!”

“Sir, I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but he’s clearly unstable. As much as I agree that he should know, we don’t know what it will do to him. He’s already hurt enough.”

Vaguely he recognized the last voice as Roxy’s. Timid and worried and shaky with fear. It made him pause, because if Roxy sounded like that, maybe these noises around him needed to be paid attention to.

“I understand, but he can’t keep going on like this. I- I can’t watch him go through this and know it’s my fault.”

Eggsy’s hammering heart stopped. His blood ran cold. The breaths he couldn’t take died in his throat. Because he knew that voice. He fucking knew that voice and it shouldn’t be here right now and what the hell was going on and-

A sigh he recognized as Merlin’s. “Alright. But if things go bad, he can’t remember.”

“Mer-“

“He _can’t_.”

Eggsy felt his entire body tense up, pulling himself in so tight that it hurt, eyes huge as he stared at the stall door, at the feet he finally realized he could see through the gap above the floor. Six shoes. Two of them solid black oxfords he would recognize anywhere.

“Alright,” thhe voice said, and then the sound of the jangling door knob was all he could hear. Time seemed to stretch as the door opened, as if someone was pulling it from both ends and making it thin and long in the middle.

Then the door was gone, and all that stood in the entrance were three people. Roxy, looking almost painfully worried, one hand in her mouth as she gnawed on her fingernails. Merlin, face weirdly pale as he kept swallowing over and over. And right there, in the middle of them both, was Harry Hart himself.

Eggsy should’ve been surprised. He should’ve been shocked or excited or furious or confused or doubtful or anything other than the flat numbness he was feeling. It felt cold and gray and somehow more painful than the sobbing, than the emotion, had felt.

“Eggsy,” the man said gently, too gently, so gently that it should’ve melted some a part of Eggsy, should have made him come unglued again right there. Only it didn’t.

He watched silently as Harry reached out, placing one cool hand on his own clammy one. It was still shaking, but Harry’s wasn’t. Harry’s was soft and comforting and all the things Eggsy had remembered it to be. But it couldn’t be. He couldn’t be there. Harry was dead and it was his fault.

“Eggsy, it’s me. Harry,” the man said, as if it wasn’t blatantly obvious. Harry looked back at Merlin and Roxy, who were both staring at Eggsy, no doubt waiting for some sort of reaction. Eggsy could practically feel the worry coming from all of them, see it in the lines in Harry’s face as he turned back to face Eggsy.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before, but there were rules to follow, codes I couldn’t break, especially not at a time like this. But seeing you suffer, seeing you think it was your fault-“

“That’s where I’m gonna have to interrupt you,” Eggsy said. His voice was flat, crisp, nothing like the state Eggsy was in just a minute ago. He watched as Harry’s eyes went wide, and shit did they look _so fucking real_.

“The real Harry wouldn’t think that,” he said bluntly. Harry’s eyes took on a slightly panicked gleam and he bit his bottom lip, squeezing Eggsy’s hand lightly.

“Eggsy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I couldn’t be more proud of you, of the man that you’ve become, of all of the effort you put into changing your own life and changing yourself. You could never have disappointed me, even if you tried. The only reason I almost died was thanks to my own decisions. Not yours. But that’s not the point. The point is-“

“The point is you’re a fucking twat if you think that. And I won’t fucking hear it.”

Harry looked positively distressed. Roxy made a choking noise and Merlin looked confused to a point of pain.

“Eggsy, please,” Roxy whispered. His eyes darted briefly to her own wet ones, but the cold hand on his own brought him back to Harry’s face.

“I don’t wanna deal with this shit. You think I haven’t heard this all before?”

Harry was desperate now, reaching out with his other hand, twisting it in the fabric of Eggsy’s suit. “Then why don’t you listen? Eggsy, I’m not dead, I’m not mad. I just want you to stop thinking that I am, because shit, I’ve never been more proud of someone, never cared more for someone, than you. You fucking changed my life, and I can’t even live thinking that you consider yourself anything less than that. Than the reason I wanted to be the man I was – that I want to be the man I am. Eggsy, you’re a hero, whether you like it or not. You’re a wonderful young man with a heart of gold and are worth so much more than y-“

“Oh fuck off it. I’m a fucking disappointment. The real Harry knows it too – knew it, only he’s dead.”

Harry’s eyes widened and he pulled Eggsy even closer to him. “He’s not dead,” he said, voice strangled and heavy with something Eggsy couldn’t understand. “He’s right here and he doesn’t think you’re a disappointment, he never has, he loves you Eggsy, he fucking loves you so much that it physically hurts knowing you think anything differently. Please-“

Eggsy glared, suddenly ripping Harry’s fingers out of the folds of his suit, pushing the other man’s once comforting hand away. Because it wasn’t comforting, it was a fucking lie, and Eggsy needed to stop lying to himself, needed to accept the truth for what it was…

He took a deep breath, ignoring the way it shuddered inside him, and looked the not-Harry right in his pleading eyes, ignoring the silent tears gathering in their deep brown depths. “You’re not Harry Hart. You’re not. Harry’s fucking dead. You think I haven’t dreamed of this before, you think I haven’t seen this same fucking thing in my head every moment I thought about all this shit I’ve been trying to ignore? Because I have. Because I’ve woken up screaming his fucking name, crying for him to run, to duck, to do anything but stand there and fucking die for the past two weeks. I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks, because I can’t fucking stand dreaming that he’d come back before waking up and having all of that hope ripped away again and again and again. Harry’s gone. I let him down, just like I let down every one who fucking means anything to me. So you can take your shit about love and get out of my fucking mind, you sick bastard.”

The bathroom was drowning in deafening silent. Harry, Harry who Eggsy was convinced was just another desperate idea of his own doing, was visibly trembling. Roxy was mortified, pure terror reflecting in the tears tracking down her face. Merlin was shaking his head slowly, eyes huge and painstakingly distressed. Vaguely, Eggsy wandered if they were fake too, all part of this dream world that he was too much of a fuck-up to actually be in. Maybe they were dead, maybe he had fucking let them down too. Maybe he was bound to a life of imagining all those he’d failed around him until they were fucking taken away every time reality hit.

“Eggsy, please-“

“Get out of my fucking mind! You’re not real! You’re _not real_!” Eggsy all but shouted. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t take this. Harry’s face and Harry’s voice and Harry’s words and Harry’s mint scented shampoo and Harry’s polished black oxfords and Harry’s pressed expensive suit and Harry’s quiet terrified tears and _Harry_.

“Harry, we have to-“ Merlin said. His voice was becoming distant again – the screaming in Eggsy’s mind was too loud.

“No!” Harry choked, lunging towards Eggsy. “No, he’ll be ok, we can’t do this, Merlin don’t touch him!”

“Get the fuck away!” Eggsy screamed, shoving Harry backwards, pushing himself further against the wall, banging his head against the cold, smooth tile. The world momentarily slid out of focus, the people in his mind becoming nothing but faded shapes for a second.

“Eggsy!” the voice of Roxy screamed, voice horrifyingly broken.

“Fuck this fuck you fuck my fucking self I fucking hate myself-“ he cried, elbows sliding against the wall, knees beginning to crumble but the shapes were becoming people again as the blow to his brain cleared and he couldn’t handle seeing not-Harry again, couldn’t even handle hearing the man still shouting at not-Merlin to stop and that they couldn’t make him forget and that he had to know how much he cared and he had to understand and he needed fucking help not amnesia.

So Eggsy slammed his head against the wall again, the sickening snap overpowering the voices. The world became a whir of nauseating color and noise and touch, screeching and sobbing and hands on his waist and something wet on his skull and he couldn’t see people anymore, just blurs of things that were too loud and too much and he fucking wanted it to stop.

Another crack, and the pain in his head seemed to explode. Fiery waves of white obliterated all sense of thinking, swallowing everything around him, consuming unimportant things like feelings and memories and the hands pulling at his body and the terrified screaming and the fact that not-Harry was wrong and dead-Harry could never care about him because he was a fuck-up and a screw-up and a waste and he deserved to die, fuck, he wanted to die.

A voice that sounded painfully like Harry crying broke though the chaos of his mind, in a last horrified whisper of “what have I done?” Then the white licking his brain became black and the screaming in his head cut off abruptly and Eggsy Unwin jumped off the cliff and plummeted into whatever was below and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t expecting Harry to be there to catch him.

 

*.*.*

 

“Will he be ok?”

Merlin glanced up, looking like he’d aged ten years in the past ten minutes. His eyes were tired, his face worn, one of his hands still shaking lightly as he flipped through the medical report. Eggsy lied in the bed beside him, skin too pale and face too thin and bandage too red and just too fucking broken. For a moment, Harry almost reached out and touched the boy, a soft whisper of skin against Eggsy’s shallow cheek. He drew back only in fear of what he might cause if he did. His skin burned where it couldn’t make contact, where it might destroy the boy instead.

“He’ll live,” Merlin said eventually. “He’ll have a hell of a concussion and maybe temporary brain damage, but he’ll live. Of course, he won’t…”

Merlin trailed off, looking up sharply at Harry, bottom lip all but chewed apart.

“He won’t remember anything. He’ll still think I’m dead,” Harry finished. The words were dead in his mouth, dead and cold and oh so painful.

Merlin nodded his head softly. “And it’s for his sake.”

“But Merlin, he thinks I’m disappointed. He thinks I don’t care. How can he-“ Harry paused, taking a steadying breath as his voice caught on the last word. “How can I live knowing he thinks I thought he was worthless when he meant so fucking much to me?”

Merlin shrugged. “Harry, I don’t know. But I’d rather his head be fucked up than for him to be dead.”

“You’ll help him though, won’t you?”

Merlin nodded. “Of course. We’ve got our best psychiatrists and mental doctors flying in from all across the world to help him sort out whatever shit is going on in there. But Harry, you have to understand… it was your ‘death’ that did this to him. He obviously couldn’t handle the trauma of having it all reverse so suddenly. Hell, he couldn’t even believe it was real. He was more convinced he was going insane – do you know how fucked up that is?”

Harry had to look away, letting out a puff of air that did nothing to alleviate the pressure building in his chest. “I do.” He took of his glasses, putting them down on the small table besides Eggsy’s bed and scrubbing his face with trembling hands. “I fucked up Merlin. I hurt him when all I ever wanted to do was help him, save him from the pain he didn’t deserve…”

“The best way to do that now is to let him get over this. Let him fix it on his own.”

“I need to help.”

Merlin grabbed his forearm, and when Harry turned to look at him, he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen the man look more intense or more serious in his life. “Harry, he almost died because you wanted to help him. I think you’ve done enough.”

“But I-“

“Roxy’s already contacting the help he really needs. Hell, Roxy herself is going to be a big part of it. She’s probably the only person left he really trusts, who he really believes cares about him.”

Harry nodded, and the ache in his chest grew. “I understand,” he said stiffly, only he didn’t, because he couldn’t understand a world where he had to sit back and watch Eggsy suffer, not able to even lift a finger to help the boy he would die for without a second thought. It hurt to be so helpless. It hurt to see Eggsy so helpless.

Fuck, it all _hurt_.

The two slipped into silence, Harry just studying Eggsy’s face, studying the lines of his forehead and the curving bags under his eyes and the bandage wrapped around his skull and the feather light imprint of eyelashes against his cheekbones and the sharp outline of his jaw and the gentle slope of his nose and the smooth shape of his lips and fuck did it hurt.

Roxy’s voice interrupted him over the intercom. “You two need to go. The doctors need to be alone with him, and we don’t know when he’ll wake, and we can’t have him seeing Harry, because I’m not letting that happen.”

Her voice was ragged from screaming and still raw with vulnerability, but there was a firm edge to her voice, a no-nonsense tone that only Eggsy could pull out of her. Harry found himself liking her all the more for it. So he grabbed Eggsy’s too cold hand, giving it a final squeeze that thankfully, maybe not thankfully, he didn’t know, garnered no response.

Then he walked out of the room and sat behind the one way mirror and ignored his own heart breaking as he watched Eggsy suffering day after day after day…

They say love is when someone’s happiness is your happiness. But listening to Eggsy crying and screaming and cursing and whispering and actually believing the shit he said about himself made Harry realize something else. Watching Eggsy think he hated him and watching Eggsy hate himself and not being able to do a single thing about it made him understand the truth. Love was when someone else’s pain was your pain.

And holy fuck, did it hurt.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you all enjoyed it! im probably going to write more just because my passion for kingsman will not go away and i really dont want it to sooo....
> 
> ok, thats all.
> 
> anniepear out.


End file.
